The Environment Ministry said Monday that a soaring cesium reading of 154,000 becquerels per kilogram has been logged in soil from the village of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, the highest level yet.

According to the results of a January survey, the cesium reading came from soil taken from the banks of the Niida River in Iitate, which lies in the hot zone around the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant, the ministry said.

The figure put the soil’s radiation above the level that requires incinerated ash to be buried in sites with ferroconcrete partitions, which is 100,000 becquerels.

The Ministry of the Environment has a 2-minute-long commercial featuring Minister Goshi Hosono, aka disaster debris pusher, in front of the mountains of disaster debris in Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture.

Just about every single sentence he utters is short on facts and accuracy and full of misrepresentation.

From the Ministry of the Environment commercial below, translated and captioned by Tokyo Brown Tabby:

Hosono: As you can see, this is a huge mountain of debris.

Fact: Debris is actually neatly piled up, because it has been removed from the immediate coastal areas hit by the tsunami and is being stored there, as you can see at 0:26 into the video. But the disaster debris wide-area processing is being sold on the perception that the tsunami debris is still littering the streets and people’s backyards after one year.

Hosono: Ishinomaki City cannot complete the disposal alone.

Fact: In fact, the city can. The debris are being stored on the landfill on the bay, not bothering anyone nearby. The city has budgeted nearly 200 billion yen (US$2.4 billion) to do the debris disposal, building 5 new incineration plants on the landfill and in the process creating 1,250 jobs. None of the sister cities of Ishinomaki City has been asked to take the debris.

Hosono: The debris is the remnants of people’s lives.

Fact: Yes it is. So? Is that the reason to spread it all over Japan? Wouldn’t the pieces of lives of people in Ishinomaki want to remain in Ishinomaki?

Hosono: There are people in the city who are discouraged to see the debris in front of them…

Fact: The debris is on the landfill, removed from the areas where people live and work. It is not in front of them. Continue reading »

Minister of the Environment Goshi Hosono, who was better known for his extramarital affair with a popular actress before Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant blew up, tells the citizens of Japan on an NHK interview: “It’s only 33 kilograms of disaster debris from Miyagi and Iwate per person who lives outside Miyagi and Iwate.”

In an NHK interview, Minister of the Environment Hosono revealed that his ministry may explore a new way whereby the incineration and the final disposal will be done in different municipalities, in order to expedite the wide-area processing of the disaster debris.

In the interview, Minister Hosono said,“I want to have portion of the debris from Miyagi and Iwate to be processed in wide areas, at all cost. If everyone in Japan outside Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures take on the debris that cannot be processed inside Miyagi and Iwate, the amount of the debris would be 33 kilograms per person. I believe it is manageable.”

The Radiation Council of the Ministry of Education and Science issued its response after deliberating on the new safety standard for radioactive cesium in food submitted by the Ministry of Health and Labor.

The Radiation Council of the Ministry of Education and Science has been deliberating on the new safety standards for radioactive cesium in food set by the Ministry of Health and Labor. On February 2, the council compiled its report that said it would be OK to loosen the standards for food and milk for infants from 50 becquerels/kg to 100 becquerels/kg. In the next meeting, the council will submit its final report to the Ministry of Health and Labor.

The majority of the council expressed the view that “for all age groups including infants, the annual [internal] radiation exposure would be within 1 millisievert even if they continue to consume food with 100 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium”, and all agreed that the health of children would be well protected. Some said the new standards would be too harsh for fishermen and farmers, and the standards might negatively affect the recovery of the disaster-affected areas. The council’s report also says “all stakeholders should participate in deciding the new standards”.

Shimada City in Shizuoka Prefecture, whose mayor is deeply involved in the corruption over waste management in the city, has decided to go ahead with test burning of the disaster debris from Iwate Prefecture against fierce opposition from the city residents and citizens in neighboring cities and prefectures. The ashes after incineration will be buried in the final disposal site for regular garbage and industrial waste in the city.

To reward such an exemplary behavior, joyous Goshi Hosono, Minister of the Environment, tells the city that he has made green tea from Shimada City as the drink at the ministry.

where the reporters get to ask questions to TEPCO and the relevant government ministries and agencies that deal with the accident, all in one room. The joint press conference, which has at least helped keep some politicians and bureaucrats honest or hold them accountable, is not only over for the month of December but over for good.

Why? Because the accident is declared by the prime minister of Japan to have been over, and the members of the Press Club has had enough, according to Ryusaku Tanaka, an independent journalist who’s been covering the Fukushima accident from the beginning.

TOKYO (AP) – The tsunami-devastated Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has reached a stable state of “cold shutdown” and is no longer leaking substantial amounts of radiation, Japan’s prime minister announced Friday.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s announcement marks a milestone nine months after the March 11 tsunami sent three reactors at the plant into meltdowns in the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

But experts noted the plant remains vulnerable to more problems and it will take decades to decommission.

“The reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have reached a state of cold shutdown,” Noda told a Cabinet meeting.

In a typical display of utter disregard for the general public, the Noda administration announced last night that there would be no more joint press conference where reporters could meet with TEPCO people and the government officials from the Cabinet Office and other relevant ministries and agencies, receive updates and ask questions.

The last night’s joint press conference is to be the last one, now that Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant is officially in a “state of a cold shutdown” and the accident has been decreed by the government to be “over”.

Here’s what Minister in charge of the accident and Minister of the Environment Goshi Hosono had to say last night in the last joint press conference, as reported by Nifty News (12/16/2011):

Minister of the Environment Hosono expressed some concern that “No one knows where the fuel is until we open the reactors”, but he reaffirmed the cold shutdown, following the lead of his prime minister. He said, “No matter where the fuel is, it is being cooled”.

Conditions inside the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan remain grim and shambolic eight months after the site was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami, according to the first journalists allowed inside since the disaster.

Officials showed reporters around the plant for the first time since March when the natural disasters triggered a meltdown in three of the plant’s reactors, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

Martin Fackler, the New York Times’ Tokyo bureau chief, said the site was strewn with piles of rubble virtually untouched since the tsunami struck.

He said: “There’s debris all around where the reactors are – twisted metal, crumpled trucks, large water tanks that have been dented and bent.

“You can see that this stuff has been strewn around and it has not been picked up and it’s been there for eight months.

“So I think that more than anything is a testament to how difficult a time they’ve had in trying to get those reactors under control.”

Radiation levels were still “very high”, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The visitors all wore full protective suits, double layers of gloves and plastic boot covers and hair nets, and carried respiration masks and radiation detectors, as the site remains highly radioactive. (Shaking my head in disbelief.)

“Up to a million people have already died from Chernobyl, and people will continue to die from cancer for virtually the rest of time. What we should know is that a millionth of a gram of plutonium, or less, can induce cancer, or will induce cancer. Each reactor has 250 kilos, or 500 pounds, of plutonium in it. You know, there’s enough plutonium in these reactors to kill everyone on earth. … You don’t understand internal emitters. I was commissioned to write an article for the New England Journal of Medicine about the dangers of nuclear power. I spent a year researching it. You’ve bought the propaganda from the nuclear industry. They say it’s low-level radiation. That’s absolute rubbish. If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it’s an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that’s true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. It’s imperative … that you understand internal emitters and radiation, and it’s not low level to the cells that are exposed. Radiobiology is imperative to understand these days.”

NHK has been quite busy recently spreading the good news that radiation exposure is somehow not what you’ve been led to believe by silly bloggers and tweets, if you only listen to the government experts and politicians.

In October, NHK did a program where the meals prepared in different households in different locations in Japan, including two in Fukushima Prefecture were analyzed for radiation. Surprise, surprise, the meals in a family in Koriyama City, Fukushima contained zero radioactive materials while other families in other locations had a small amount of radioactive materials in their meals. (NHK actually said “zero”, instead of “below detection limit”.) Well, the caveat was that the researcher’s equipment (germanium semiconductor detector) to analyze the radiation turned out to be broken, and NHK had to take down the test result page from the website. (If you read Japanese, the sorry story is related here, for example.)

But the program had been aired already, and probably it has convinced quite a few mothers not to worry about radiation any more when they go shopping for food for the families. NHK says so, it’s safe! I feel so bad for having avoided Fukushima produce!

NHK just did it again, a bit more subtle way this time, in the news on November 5 regarding the new government initiative to study the effect of “low-level” radiation. For NHK, a public broadcaster, “low-level” radiation means 20 millisieverts per year for non-radiation workers because the politician said so. To say it in a different way, NHK is saying the annual radiation exposure limit for radiation workers before the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident is now the “low-level” for the general public.

Goshi Hosono, Minister in charge of nuclear accident, gave a lecture in Hamamatsu City [in Shizuoka Prefecture] and indicated that he would create a working group of experts to study the effect of low-level radiation of about 20 millisieverts per year on health, in the aftermath of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident.

Minister Hosono said, “If the annual cumulative radiation level is 100 millisieverts and above, we know from the past nuclear plant accidents that there will be some effect on health. But other than that, nothing is confirmed.”